


you will find that the world has changed forever

by violentdarlings



Series: clockwork triad [1]
Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Determining The Relationship, F/M, Herongraystairs, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M, Victorian, basically teenages sneaking around the Institute snogging, set between CP1 and CP2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6134005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herongraystairs. AU from the moment in Clockwork Prince where Tessa burns her hand on the poker. If Jem had decided to seek out his fiancée rather than his violin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Will I

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine. Title from Arwen's Song from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

_“So? There's two of us and one of you, and whenever we feel like it, we can be three. That's love too, you know.”_

_S. Dora, Three_

 

Will slams the door to the drawing room behind him, pausing for only a few moments as if waiting for Tessa to call after him. But there is only silence from behind him, and would Will could shut all the agony of his wounded heart up behind him as easily as he can shut a simple door.

There is some vague plan in his head to go to Jem, as if his _parabatai_ is the lodestone drawing him ever back to true north and the path he ought to walk. But no sooner has the idea appeared in his head does he see Jem coming towards him down the corridor. There is a conversation they need to have, Will knows, somewhere far more private than the corridor just down from the drawing room.

“Is Tessa in there?” Jem asks. “I knocked on her bedroom door, but there was no reply.” Will feels as though he cannot speak, his throat locked tight, but he manages a nod. The smile that breaks over Jem’s face is like the first light of dawn coming over the horizon; Will does not know, how he could have been so blind. “I was opening the case of my violin when I considered, what sort of man would rather be at his music than spend time with so lovely a fiancée?”

“Quite so,” Will replies, his mouth full of the jagged edges of the words he cannot bring himself to say. Not to Jem, dearer to him than his own blood and bones and breath, the better half of his soul. He could not imagine any other more worthy to be Tessa’s husband, since she is never to be Will’s own.

Jem opens his mouth again to continue, but the words are lost in the scream that echoes down the hall. Near, far too near, and Will’s thinks _Tessa_ even as he sees dawning horror, a twin expression to his own, cross Jem’s face.

They move together, as one, the way they always do in battle. Will is fumbling for the weapons’ belt he does not have and Jem is nearly barrelling the door down in his haste to get to Tessa. And oh, the sight of her crumpled on the floor, crying as though the world has ended – there is nothing in him that could endure the sight of that.

“Tessa,” he says, but Jem is faster; his silver hair in disarray, his face a mask of terror and bewilderment, he crosses the room in a few brief strides to crouch beside Tessa on the floor. Will can only watch, helpless, feeling like an interloper and a voyeur as Jem touches Tessa gently on the shoulder, murmuring things in a soft comforting tone that Will cannot for the life of him hear from so far away.

Tessa’s reaction is immediate. She pushes herself away from Jem, as though she cannot bear to have him near her. She is almost in the fire, and confusion and sorrow has darkened Jem’s face. “Come away from there, Tessa, I beg of you,” he says in a low voice, his hands on Tessa’s shoulders, trying to pull her away from the blaze. Will turns away, unable to endure the sight of Jem’s hands on Tessa, and sees Sophie poke her head around the doorway.

“What on earth is going on here?” she asks, and Will hushes her sharply, an act she takes none too kindly to.

“Jem has things well in hand,” Will informs Sophie quietly, and the maid glares at him.

“Then why are you here?” she asks acerbically, and Will has no answer. Still, she goes, pulling the door firmly shut behind her, and Will turns back to find that Jem has manages to pry Tessa away from the fire. Will feels sick all the way through his body, as though he has brought this sudden malaise of the spirit onto her through the verbalisation of his ardour for her. Although Will knows well he should leave, he can’t help but edge closer to his _parabatai_ and his _parabatai’s_ fiancée.

“By the Angel, Tessa,” Jem says, his voice low and pleading, “by God himself, please tell me what ails you. Let me help.” Will is horrified to realise the awful noise coming out of Tessa’s throat is a laugh, perverted as it is by the tears thickening her voice.

“You cannot help,” she says, her hands over her face. Never has Will seen Tessa give herself so thoroughly over to grief; not when her brother died, or when he betrayed her. She seems to have completely given up on hiding her feelings; this unabashed sorrow is very unlike Tessa. Will considers it must be a great torment to her, whatever it is; the worst kind of soul-ache, to rid her so exhaustively of her composure.

“Of course I can help,” Jem says. “I am your fiancée, I’m to be your husband. It’s my responsibility to look after you.” If anything, Tessa only sobs harder, and Jem looks up at Will helplessly. _I don’t know what to do,_ his eyes say, and Will can only shrug harder.

“Jem,” Tessa says, and Will’s focus snaps back to her. “I don’t deserve you. I can’t lie to you any longer.” Rigid with horror, Will attempts to catch her gaze, but her eyes are fixed firmly on Jem.

“Lie?” echoes Will’s _parabatai_ , a thread of something unknown entering his voice. “What do you mean?” Tessa’s sobbing has abated, but tears still trickle down her face. Against his volition Will steps closer, his shadow falling over the couple on the floor, and Jem looks up. The firelight glints upon his silver hair and his coin-bright eyes, now darkening with something like revelation. “Tessa,” Jem says, his voice as cold as Will has ever heard it, “What do you mean when you say you can no longer lie to me?”

Tessa turns her head to look up at Will and, like prey staring into the eyes of a snake, he is frozen into place. How long they communicate only with their eyes, each unable to look away from the other, Will does not know. The silence is only broken by the low noise of dumb animal pain that is ripped from Jem’s throat, a moan of torment that transcends humanity and demons and all that crawls or swims or flies on the surface of God’s earth. It snaps the invisible cord between Tessa and Will, frees them from their momentary fixation.

Will takes a look at Jem, and wishes he hadn’t. His _parabatai_ is as pale as the grave, his skin stretched over his cheekbones tight as a drum, his eyes darting between Will and Tessa, putting two and two together and coming up with five. Tessa is reaching out to touch Jem, but he pulls away from her sharply, rises to his feet. There is still enough gentleman in him to assist Tessa up as well, but the moment she is standing upright, he drops her hand as if one burned.

“Tell me it is not true,” Jem says in a low, controlled voice. “That there is nothing but friendship between you both. That my _parabatai_ is not in love with my fiancée, and she is not in love with him. Tessa –” Jem’s voice breaks, his fists twitching at his sides. “Tell me, please, _quin ai de_ , do you love Will?”

“Yes,” Tessa says immediately, her breath leaving her in a great rush, as though a vast weight has been lifted from her shoulders. Jem, on the other hand, flinches as though he’s been struck, hard, somewhere around the region of his chest. And Will? Will cannot hear a thing through the rush of air in his ears. Tessa. Tessa _loves him_. “Jem, please, say something,” Tessa is pleading, and Will comes back to himself at just the right moment to feel the whistle of air past him as Jem storms from the room, slamming the door as Will himself had done only a few minutes prior. Has it only been a few minutes? It feels like forever, and like no time at all.

“Oh, God,” Tessa says softly, and Will itches to go to her, to wrap her in his arms and kiss the tears from her cheeks. But even if she loves him, she has promised Jem. She is no longer Will’s to comfort. So instead he watches mutely as Tessa gropes for a nearby armchair and sits down hard. “Jem will never forgive me,” she says quietly, and Will opens his mouth to contradict her, to offer some meagre measure of comfort. But despite his best intentions, what comes out of his mouth is something completely different.

“You love me,” Will says, watching Tessa’s drawn face for any flicker of doubt. When none comes, and Tessa nods, Will continues. “And you love Jem. You love us both, equally, not one more than the other.” Tessa flinches back into the shadows of the chair, but her spine is straight; her voice, when it comes, is level.

“I cannot help it,” she says softly. “If I could give myself to both of you, I would.” Her breath hitches. “There must be something wrong with me. To be capable of loving two people, equally – perhaps it is the demon in me. A taint on my soul, one that can never be scrubbed away.”

“Tess, no!” Will says in shock. “There is no taint on your soul. You know that.” Tessa finally looks at him, her face red and blotchy from crying, her eyes wounded and aching, like bruises set into her face.

“Tell that to Jem,” she replies.


	2. Jem I

Jem’s breath is scorching in his throat, his heart beating like mad, and his thoughts are racing so fast he cannot organise them into anything resembling a clear pattern. Somehow against all reason or logic he makes it back to his bedroom, near collapses onto the bed, his joints throbbing and his head spinning. All he can think of is Tessa’s face when she said she loves Will. And the sudden, hopeless longing in his _parabatai’s_ face at the sight of her. Blind, so blind, and yet at the crux of it, he is not entirely surprised. He and Will have been as close as one another’s flesh for years. Is it any great shock that they both have fallen, tragically and excruciatingly, for the same girl?

He must give her up. Would it not be better for Tessa, to have never known what it is to love a dying man, but rather to have the heart and keeping of one as vital and full of life as Will? Perhaps he may yet live to see them wed, even though the thought of it alone fills him with bile and rage.

If only he had gone to his violin rather than seek out his fian – _Tessa_. Filled up with his music, he might not have even noticed if the pair of them had danced the gavotte past him wearing badges that read ‘She Doesn’t Love You’. Oh, he’d believed she’d loved him, that she had said she would marry him for a reason other than sheer pity.

He takes the violin in his hands, but his fingers are shaking too violently to wring any music from it. Jem has the sudden urge to throw his beloved instrument at the wall, to smash and crush the wood to powder, snap the strings and break the bow. He does not, of course. He returns it to its case and sets it far away from him, where it will be safe.

There is a pounding at the door. “James!” Will bellows through the wood. Jem abruptly regrets putting his violin away. At least with the music, he would have been able to pretend he truly could not hear his _parabatai_ calling for him. “Jem, I know you’re in there!”

If Jem was a shade less of a gentleman, he would tell Will to go hang and be done with it. But he knows Will well enough to know he is like a dog after a bone with the things he deems important, that he will wake the whole Institute from their beds and think nothing of it if it assists him to achieve his goals.

Jem strides open to the door and yanks it open. Will, evidently not expecting a capitulation so soon into the assault, nearly falls into Jem’s bedroom. Jem strides away from his _parabatai_. He does not want to be close to anyone right now. “What do you want, William?” Jem sighs. For once, his friend’s full first name is not laced with dry affection. Merely weariness, and disappointment, and an agony that Jem keeps locked down deep in his chest, where no one, least of all himself, ever has to see it.

“You didn’t give her a chance to explain,” Will says sharply. “It’s not what you think.”

“What is it, then?” Jem inquires. “My best friend and _parabatai_ is not besotted with the only woman I have ever loved?” Will flushes a dull red, all the way down to his collarbones. Any other time, Jem would be surprised. It is not often, that Will blushes in the slightest. “There is very little room for misinterpretation there, I believe.”

“Yes, I love her,” Will says hotly, and something in Jem cracks right down to his very bones. Up until this moment, he had almost believed it was all a fever dream, a wicked nightmare. “And Tessa loves me. But she has given you her word. How can you doubt that she will keep it?” Incensed, Jem whirls around, facing his _parabatai_ and relishing the look of confusion and momentary fear on Will’s face. It is not often, that Jem is truly angry with Will. Not often at all.

“I know Tessa will keep her word,” Jem says savagely, his ire for a moment breaking through his usual calmness. “Is that all you think I can hope for, being as I am? Not true affection nor outright passion, but rather duty, the icy sterility of the sickroom and the dry touch of the nurse? Is that all you think I am fit for?”

“Of course not,” Will snaps. “Tessa loves you, she told me so herself –”

“And what of my love?” Jem says sharply. “What of my honour, and my duty? Do you honestly think I could be with Tessa, without doubt, if I knew the exquisite happiness I felt awakened in you an agony that the very pits of hell could not rival? I am not cruel, Will. If one of us cannot have Tessa, then neither will.”

“No!” Will bursts out, lit up from within with righteous anger. “You cannot. This may well be your last chance to –” He breaks off, but Jem has heard enough of the sentence to know precisely what he means. He has always known, what Will means. His composure regained, Jem merely spreads his hands in a universal gesture of agreement.

“My last chance to be with a woman,” Jem agrees affably. “You are correct enough in that. But I will not aim knives at the tender places in your heart. I will not be Tessa’s husband, at the expense of my _parabatai’s_ happiness.” Will is smiling, and Jem feels a sinking sensation in his chest. When Will smiles like that, either someone has just mentioned demon pox, or Will has come up with some mad new scheme to get them into trouble. “What is it?” Jem asks warily, and Will’s grin breaks into a full blown chuckle.

“We could stand here arguing about who deserves Tessa all night,” he says in between chortling, “but she will make her own decisions, as ever, regardless of what we say.” Jem stands stock still. Will is right, of course. They could both talk at Tessa until they are blue in the face, and get no further than a pair of fools trying to tear down a mountain by throwing stones at it. Tessa will think for herself as she always does, and Jem cannot bring himself to regret it. It is one of the things he most admires about her in the first place, after all.

“You are correct, William,” Jem agrees, and the smile does not dim from Will’s face, even as his eyes darken a little in colour.

“I know,” Will says with his trademark lack of modesty, “and it’ll be you, James, who talks to her.” Jem’s eyes widen.

“Surely not,” he begins, but Will just claps a hand on his shoulder.

“Tomorrow, when she’s had some time to think,” Will counsels, and Jem dreads the dawn.

 

But at breakfast the following morning, Tessa is not there. ‘Indisposed’ is Sophie’s term for it. Jem and Will sit side by side, the air between them as thick as congealed custard, although no one else seems to pick up on it.

Jem’s attempt to see Tessa in her bedroom is thwarted by the stalwart Sophie, who shoos him away when she finds him lurking about Tessa’s door. “She will be better when she is better!” snaps the lady’s maid. “She needs to rest, if she is to accompany you all to the Council chamber tomorrow.”

And that had been that. Jem had passed a sleepless night stretched out on his bed, and sometime around two in the morning Will had stumbled in, hair tousled and a sleep wrinkle pressed into his cheek, to spend the rest of the dark hours in his usual armchair. They’d both risen with the dawn, neither having achieved even a dram of sleep, to dress well for the Council meeting.

Tessa does not make eye contact with Jem the whole morning. She is unusually subdued, but he sees the thin chain of his pendant still around her throat, and his heart thuds a little harder in his chest. Charlotte is reaffirmed as the head of the Institute, and even as Jem is pleased there is a dark shadow to his joy, a certain sting that needles at his heart.

That night, Jem waits for Tessa out in the hallway, and his throat near to closes over when he sees her in her blue satin, the little blue flowers in her hair. Quite without meaning to, he leans in and kisses her, something painful untying itself in his chest when she responds as she always has, openly and without restraint. Jem begins to speak, and somehow cannot bring himself to talk of what he has been burning to for the last two days. Not now, of all times.

So he takes Tessa’s hand and walks her down to dinner and announces their engagement, and the entire time looks at Will, his eyes burning like sapphire stars, and feels something small and cold in his soul. Will says the kindest things, and it might shock anyone else but Jem has always known Will has a heart far kinder than Will has ever cared to let on. Will himself had perhaps forgotten its existence, but Jem has always known it was there, deep down.

There is a ring of the doorbell and while Jem is trying to compose what he intends to say to Tessa, later, in absolute privacy, Will’s little sister arrives at the Institute.

And just like that, another complication begins.


	3. Tessa I

Tessa has been waiting for Will or Jem to say something. It occurs to her that perhaps they are waiting for her to make the first move, as if she is white in chess. She does not entirely like that idea. Firstly, that they may consider themselves allied against her; she despises that thought with everything in her heart. And secondly, that she is the only one out of the three of them to lay all her cards on the table, so to speak. She loves Will. She loves Jem. She is the honest one.

She expects Will to be the one who comes to her, to be perfectly honest. He is undoubtedly the more verbose of the pair. And yet his time has been unexpectedly taken up by the wild-haired waif who had appeared on the front doorstep of the Institute and demanded to be trained as a Shadowhunter. Like her brother.

Yet, regardless of Will’s gift with words, it is Tessa’s soon to be husband that finally seeks her out. She is reading in the library, tucked into a little nook padded with cushions. It is a place that very few Shadowhunters seem to know about, a good place to hide and read. Will knows, of course; he has had to fetch her from here a handful of times for dinner, when she has become too lost in fantasy and fictional worlds to hear the dinner bell. But she had not thought Jem knew.

Tessa reads for hours, until the hair prickles up on the back of her neck and she realises someone is watching her. Her head flies up to see Jem, seated in a nearby armchair. It is the first time they have been alone, truly alone, since he proposed to her.

“Hello Jem,” Tessa says calmly, resisting the urge to press a hand to her bosom to calm her rapidly beating heart. “Do you need me for something?” Jem shakes his head.

“Does a man need a reason to see the woman he loves?” he asks, and Tessa sharply notices how he had neglected to add in the woman’s love for the man.

“It depends,” Tessa says warily, “entirely on the man.” She knows as soon as she says it that it is precisely the wrong thing to say.

“So it would seem,” Jem says curtly. Tessa sighs, and sets down her book.

“We have not truly spoken since you discovered my feelings for Will,” Tessa says evenly, and she does not relish how Jem flinches when she mentions the word ‘feelings’ and ‘Will’ so close together. “I never intended to cause you any pain, James.”

“I know you didn’t,” Jem says quickly. “I do know that, Tessa. None of can choose the ones we love. It’s just that…”

“It’s hard,” Tessa says. “I know, Jem. If I could rip myself in half, and give a piece to each of you, I would.” Jem is watching her with a tiny smile playing about his mouth. “What is it?” Tessa asks sharply, her hands firmly on her hips.

“Nothing. It’s just… you sounded like Will, for a moment there.” Tessa looks at him, his eyes cast down, lashes silvery silk against his cheek.

“There is something you wish to ask me,” Tessa says calmly, and Jem nods, his gaze still firmly on his feet. “Then ask,” Tessa says, daring to take his arm in her own, to feel the slimness and the strength of him under her hands. And a truth she has never told anyone, perhaps never considered at all: that she is running her hands over his form, memorising him by touch, for when the day comes that there is no more Jem.

“Have you kissed him?” Jem asks now, his voice low, and were Tessa a shade less controlled, she would swear at him as a lady ought never to do. She has spent rather too much time around Shadowhunters, she thinks. But oh, the things her boys fixate on. As though to kiss Will is a greater sin than to love him. “Have you kissed Will?” Jem presses, and Tessa nearly rolls her eyes.

The ways men phrase things, Tessa thinks idly. Not, _have you kissed one another_ , or simply, _have you kissed_. There must be an initiator and a recipient, feet to lay blame at and hands to follow suit. “Why do you ask me this?” Tessa says, well aware she is dodging the question. “What possible reason could you have?”

“Because I need to know,” Jem replies. Tessa passes a hand over her brow wearily.

“Will and I have kissed each other,” she says, and looks up at Jem’s face. He is as still as if carved from stone, as if formed from something cold and dark and unknowable. “Before you and I became engaged.”

“And after?” Jem asks in a quiet voice that contains all sorts of darker things simmering under the surface. With a sudden bolt of remembrance, Tessa feels Will’s hands on her, his lips against hers, the night all her secrets had come spilling out. Snapped out of memory, Tessa feels her cheeks heat with a blush there is no hiding, and something closes in Jem’s face, as swiftly and sharply as a book being snapped shut. “I see,” he says, and Tessa reaches for his arm desperately, although he is already out of reach.

“He didn’t know,” Tessa tells Jem desperately. “I stopped him. He didn’t know.”

“You stopped him,” Jem echoes, his voice neutral. “But not right away.” Tessa bites her lip. She cannot lie to Jem, not anymore.

“No,” she finally murmurs. “Not… not right away.” Jem is up and moving, and Tessa feels the absence of his presence beside her like the flower mourning the sun.

“That’s what I thought,” he says, and lets the door shut gently behind him.

 

“Jem asked me if I have kissed you,” Tessa says to Will’s back as he rubs down Balios. For all they have stableboys to help with the work, Tessa knows Will enjoys doing it himself. Will’s hand stills a moment on the horse’s coat, the currycomb firm in his grip, before he begins methodically brushing the horse down again. She had tried many of his usual haunts, before finding success in the stables.

“And what did you tell him?” Will asks, his voice carefully without emotion. He is not nearly as successful at it as Jem is, for all Will has had plenty of practise at pretending to be uncaring while under the curse that never was.

“The truth, of course,” Tessa says, taking up a second comb and moving around to Balios’ other side. This much, at least, she can do.” Much of it he read in my face without me having to say a word.” Will sighs loudly.

“That’s our Jem,” he says. “Sharp as a tack and as tough as old boots.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Jem says from the doorway, and both Will and Tessa whirl around to look at him. Jem is not looking as sharp as a tack and as tough as old boots, today; he is bone-pale, dark shadows hollowing out his face. “Do you always talk about me when I’m not around?” he inquires. Tessa smiles.

“More than you know,” she says. Will grins, and it is the first occasion in some time that she has seen that reckless joy spread over his face.

“Not for the reasons you’d think, either,” Will continues blithely.

“I can only imagine,” Jem says, shaking his head as if to clear the cobwebs out of it. “Are we alone here?” he asks, and Will nods. “I have been thinking,” he begins, and Tessa holds up her hand.

“I’m not choosing either of you,” Tessa says, and for a moment there is unmitigated silence, before both boys begin talking at once over the top of one another.

“What do you mean?” Jem asks heatedly. “You must choose Will.” Tessa stares at him in astonishment.

“Don’t listen to him, Tessa,” Will says quickly. “Don’t listen to him at all. Jem is your fiancée. You belong with him, and he with you.”

“The only reason I’m your fiancée is because it occurred to me to propose to you before it occurred to Will,” Jem murmurs, his voice as low and bewitching as the _encanto_ used by vampires to lure in their prey. “That need not hold you to something you do not want.”

“Don’t be a fool, Jem,” Will says scornfully. “I know what Tessa means to you.” Jem takes a step forward, until he is only inches away from Will’s. It is the closest to a fight Tessa has ever seen them come to, and it stirs something in her, something low and deep in her that cannot be quantified or analysed. At least, not right now at this moment, when Jem and Will seem almost about to come to blows. Over her, of all things!

“And I know what Tessa means to you! By the Angel, William, you cannot mean this –”

“Will you both be quiet!” Tessa shouts, and miraculously, they do. Will is scarlet in the face and Jem is breathing in deep, rasping gulps, although there is no coughing, no blood to signal he is in respiratory distress. Tessa watches them both until the hectic flush fades from Will’s cheeks and Jem is breathing normally again.

“Thank you,” Tessa says calmly. “While I appreciate this vigorous back and forth over my metaphorical hand, it is entirely unnecessary. And what’s more, the pair of you know it.” She looks at them hard for a moment. She wants to make sure they’re listening this time. “I refuse to choose either of you. I choose both.”

They exchange glances. “That’s not the way it is done, amongst Shadowhunters,” Jem says carefully. Tessa cannot quite meet his eyes.

“Then I will have neither of you,” she replies. “I will not come between the two I hold most dear in all of God’s creation. Good night.”

Tessa leaves the stables, but as she goes, she hears Will’s despairing voice, “It seems to be all or nothing, my friend.” For a moment Tessa hovers, straining to hear Jem’s quieter response, when it finally comes.

“Of Tessa, can you really expect anything less?” Jem says, mirth sweetening his voice, and Tessa enters the Institute proper on a wave of familiar laughter.


	4. Will II

“Show me,” Jem says, and Will nearly falls off of his chair in shock. They have been sitting in companionable silence in Jem’s bedroom, Jem in the armchair, Will sprawled on the bed. So is their comfort with one another that Will uses Jem’s bed as his own, and Jem often absently tidies Will’s quarters when he is there.

“Show you what? Is this about the ducks again? Because I told you, I’d rather be shot than go anywhere near those rampaging little fiends –”

“I was not,” Jem says with his usual calmness, although if Will can sense something lurking beneath the surface of that still pond, he is not fool enough to bring it up. “Referring to the ducks. I was more speaking of Tessa and yourself.” Will feels as if all of the air has been sucked out of the room. He’d almost prefer the ducks, to be honest. Almost.

“Tessa and I?” Will echoes. “I have absolutely no idea what you mean.” There has been a semi-present headache thundering behind his temples for the last few days since his little sister had arrived on the front porch of the Institute. Since she had stubbornly refused to leave unless Will himself would come with. The sight of Cecily, looking so like their mother, is like a punch to the chest that Will cannot recover from.

“You do,” Jem says patiently. “William, be reasonable. I know you’ve kissed Tessa. She told me. I want you to show me.” Will almost chokes on his own tongue as he fully understands what Jem is asking him for.

“You. Want,” Will says, his voice strangled in his throat, “to watch. Me. Kiss Tessa.” He looks over at Jem pleadingly, as if begging his _parabatai_ to confirm he has gotten the words out in the right order.

“That’s correct,” Jem says meditatively.

“Why?” Will rasps, quite certain his _parabatai_ has run mad, that the silvery yin fen affecting his mind in some bizarre fashion. Jem looks normal enough, certainly, but then so did Jessamine, and look how that turned out.

“It seems hardly appropriate, you kissing my fiancée when I’m not around,” Jem says, and Will growls deep in his throat.

“All the times I kissed her, Tessa wasn’t your fiancée,” he snaps, and Jem shrugs.

“Except for the other night, when she burned her hand,” he retorts, still with that infuriatingly mild manner. But Will is not foolish enough to think that Jem’s outward stillness reflects a heart that is not as deep and passionate as his own.

“I didn’t know she was your fiancée,” Will says through gritted teeth. He is no longer lounging on the bed, but rather sitting up on the edge of it, his fists curled. “And when she told me, I vowed never to touch her again in any way as a brother might not.”

“The point being,” Jem continues, as if Will hasn’t said a word, “is that you have kissed my fiancée. Multiple times. I want to know. I want to see if –”

“See if what?” Will asks, although he has a feeling he already knows the answer. Jem blinks, and just like that the blank mask falls away, and Jem is looking at Will with that terrible pain in his silver eyes.

“I need to know if she’s. If. If she’s different with you,” Jem says abruptly. “If she’s gentler with me because of my – condition.”

“By the Angel,” Will sighs. He does not think it too terribly blasphemous, to swear by the Angel in amongst the tangled threads of his personal life. “You do not need to see that.”

“Yes, I do,” Jem says quickly. “I need to see if there’s a difference. How could I –” His voice breaks off, as if his throat tight. “How could I ever touch her, knowing she could very well be thinking of you?” Jem turns away, ostensibly to look out the window, but Will knows it is truly to keep his emotions in check.

“Oh, James,” Will says, his voice terribly sad. Jem brushes viciously at his cheek, but surely he is not crying. Will looks away anyway, to give his _parabatai_ the respect he knows Jem would always grant him.

“That is,” Jem says darkly, “if she ever allows me to touch her again. She has not wavered, you know.”

“I know,” Will agrees. Tessa’s newfound mantra of ‘all or nothing’ has held firm, for all she still wears Jem’s pendant around her throat.

“Do you think she would –” Jem breaks off. Will, slumped once more on the bed, peers up at him curiously.

“Would what, James?” Jem is looking determinedly out the window again.

“Do you think she would mind, kissing you in front of me?” Will groans, throwing his forearm over his eyes.

“We are back to this, are we?” he asks. “I will not countenance the idea, James. Not ever for a heartbeat.”

“But don’t you see?” Jem exclaims, sitting bolt upright in his chair, catching Will’s ankle in his thin hands in his agitation. “This might be the only way she will accept. Us, together. The three sides of a triangle.”

“A blasphemous triangle,” Will snorts. “You know the Law as well as I do. _Parabatai_ who cross the line go mad, Jem, they are outcasts –”

“I am not suggesting you and I together,” Jem says icily, and something like a pang goes through Will somewhere secret and strange. “I know the Law as well as you do. Rather, Tessa in the middle, and you and I on either side. Bookends, if you will.”

“This is madness,” Will says, just as cold as Jem. “There must be another way.” Jem lifts himself out of his chair, as quick as a silver shadow across the room.

“Do let me know when you’ve thought of it,” he says, with heavier sarcasm than Will ever thought Jem capable of, and the door swings behind him with a thud.

 

Will does think. He thinks until he passes out cold on Jem’s bed, and wakes to find that at some point in the night Jem has returned and climbed into bed beside him. Will’s shoes and coat have been carefully removed, his shirt collar unfastened so he does not accidentally choke himself in the night, his cuffs loose and fluttering like white birds around his wrists. The room is dark but a sliver of moon illuminates just enough of Jem’s face that Will can fill in the rest from memory alone. The _yin fen_ silver hair and eyes, now closed peacefully in sleep; the nightshirt pulled down just enough to expose one razor sharp collarbone. In the dark Jem is a different creature to in the day, a fey thing from another world, less Will’s _parabatai_ , somehow.

“Jem?” Will murmurs. “Are you awake?” A soft, boyish snore is his only response. Will twists his fingers in the sheets, before abruptly coming to a decision.

“I suppose,” Will whispers, with a sensation of being an absolute idiot, “if I had to share Tessa with anyone, I am glad it is you.” Jem’s steady breathing does not change and, bolder, Will presses one fingertip infinitely gently to Jem’s collarbone, to see if it feels as sharp as it looks. It does not, to his surprise, but Will jerks his hand away as if he has been burnt. In the dark he gathers his discarded clothes and shoes, sitting neatly on the armchair as if waiting for him, and hastily makes his escape, closing the door gently behind him.

(Silver eyes follow Will as he leaves the room, although he never looks back.)

In the morning, Will stumbles out to breakfast with his eyes only half open. He grunt good morning at those already at the breakfast table, ignoring Cecy’s scowl in his general direction. His days now belong to training his little sister, so that she doesn’t get killed in this life he never would have chosen for her. But needs must when the devil drives, and Cecy is certainly an apt enough pupil, perhaps even sharper than Will was at her age.

In the evening, after dinner, Will takes a short walk and stops at Tessa’s door. He knocks sharply, and at the called, “Come in!” he allows himself entrance. Tessa is reading, as he might have expected, and Will offers her his arm. “Whatever is the occasion?” Tessa asks, tidying her hair and smoothing down her dress, looking only a little suspicious as she closes her door and steps out into the corridor.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Will says, passing Gideon in the hall and exchanging a cordial nod. Tessa raises her eyebrows.

“Truly, Will? After all I’ve seen since I came to London?” The walk to Jem’s room is short, and Will hears the exquisite swell of Jem’s music before they get close. Tessa hesitates for a moment.

“Jem may not wish to see me, Will,” she says, pulling her arm loose from his grasp. Will tuts.

“This was his idea, Tess,” he says, looking down at her, trying to impart the truth of it into her eyes. “He asked me to bring you.” And very well, perhaps that part is not strictly true, but Will is allowed a smidgeon of artistic license, surely. Will waits for her nod, and then raps sharply on Jem’s door. There is not even a hitch in the music as Jem calls, “Enter,” but when he turns to the open door and sees Tessa there, the bow fumbles over the strings for just a moment.

“Tessa,” he breathes. Tessa ducks her head.

“Don’t stop, Jem,” she whispers, as though to speak too loudly would break the spell Jem’s music has woven over the room. Jem closes his eyes, turns away, and as Tessa sits in the armchair and Will perches on the bed, Jem plays into the night.


	5. Jem II

“That was magnificent, Jem,” Tessa says, when the music finally draws to a close. She is dabbing gently at her eyes. Will says nothing, although Jem peers at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Thank you. Why are you both here?” Jem asks with unusual bluntness, setting down his violin and bow with the greatest of care. Automatically he looks at Will, who just gives a lopsided shrug in response.

“Ask, and ye will receive,” he says lazily, and Jem feels the bottom drop out of his stomach in shock. It is one thing to request _that_ of one’s _parabatai_ in the abstract, entirely another for Will to commit to the act entirely.

“I don’t understand,” Tessa says; with some difficulty Jem cuts his glance away from Will, admiring the picture she makes, sitting there in her grey silk. Christ, how he loves her, how he never wants to leave her or for her to leave him.

“Jem has requested I kiss you,” Will says, his voice gone low and rough as gravel, enough to send something like a frisson through Jem. “He wants to see.” Tessa’s lovely mouth has parted slightly; Jem digs his fingers into the linen of his trousers, the better to restrain himself from taking what he wants.

“Jem?” Tessa asks. “Truly?” Jem nods, a painful jerky thing. God, the sight of it might kill him where he stands, it might be salvation. He will not know, until he sees. “But I am your fiancée,” Tessa reminds him gently. “It is not done, for engaged women to kiss other men.”

“Perhaps in the mundane world,” Jem allows, surprised to hear his voice so steady. “And perhaps even amongst most Shadowhunters. But Will _is_ me, my second self, my _parabatai_. There is not exactly protocol, for cases such as these.” Jem can see Tessa is not convinced; she is biting at her lip, her hands knotted into sharp fists at her sides.

“You… promise, that you will not be jealous?” Tessa asks, and it would hurt him, to see the naked longing in her, except for how deeply he desires himself to see his _parabatai_ and the woman who is to be his bride entwined together.

“I cannot promise you that,” Jem says quietly. “I am already jealous. But I must know. Only, though, if you are comfortable with it, Tessa.” Tessa is silent for several moments; Jem looks over at Will, who is uncharacteristically quiet, for once allowing Jem to set the pace. Finally, Tessa nods, and it is as though a dam has been unleashed. Will stands up, strides over to Tessa, and pulls her to her feet. Tessa is pliant, lax in his arms, and with something like tenderness Will pushes Jem down, to sit in the discarded armchair.

Will and Tessa are wrapped so tightly around one another it is almost impossible to discern where Tessa ends and Will begins. They are not kissing, but rather embracing; Will’s head is tucked into Tessa’s neck, her arms around his waist, his lips against her ear. He is murmuring something to her, words that Jem cannot hear, but strangely he does not feel as though the odd man out. Rather that he is witnessing something sacred and special, a covenant of sorts.

Will raises his voice. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he tells Tessa, although Jem understands the words are for his benefit also. Will brings his hands up to frame Tessa’s face and kisses her on the mouth, so gently that Jem almost thinks they are not kissing at all. But the change in Tessa is instantaneous; the noise she makes against Will’s mouth is pure longing, and she grips his shirtfront in her fists so hard Jem can see her knuckles whitening. Will too reacts to Tessa’s fervour; his hands go from the sides of her face to bury in her hair, to grip her firmly by the waist and draw her flush against him.

Jem is captivated. Oh, there is a sick sour feeling in his throat that has nothing to do with his stomach and all to do with raw, undiluted jealousy. Worse is the fact that he cannot quite work out who exactly he is jealous of. Will, for kissing Tessa; Tessa, for kissing Will, or Will, for the strong fit body he possesses that is not enslaved to a demon drug he loathes. But oh, the beauty of them, the way they seem to complement one another, Will who he has always loved (platonically, his mind insists) and Tessa, a newer love but one no less intense for it.

Like so much Jem values or requires in his life, the sight of them together both mesmerises and sickens him. The _yin fen_ , the high it causes when he takes just that little bit extra, even if he pays for it down the way when he has to skimp on later doses. The harsh burning of the Marks, and the power they flood into his veins. The thrill of battle, and the nagging ache in his joints that signal he has once again overreached himself.

Jem has stood up without realising it, the better to come closer to Tessa and Will. Their kissing has lost the unstable fire it had possessed before; now, they crowd close to one another as if they fear to be torn away from one another. Jem watches Will press the advantage, Tessa sally forth with a rejoinder, Will retreat only to return again. A battle, of sorts, in microcosm, and there no clear victor. Jem wants her so violently it hurts, blood making its presence known in every corner of his body, even those he had begun to fear the yin fen would take from him entirely. But, no. Perhaps the only antidote he ever needed was Tessa.

Jem steps back a little involuntarily when Tessa leans back, just enough to free her mouth and gasp in a much-needed gulp of air. “Shadowhunters,” she says with a smile. “I swear, you must have a rune that decreases your need to breathe.”

“We do, as a matter of fact,” Will says gravely, not quite as out of breath but still rather pink in the cheeks.

“Although it’s meant to be used for diving in deep water, rather than for kissing,” Jem murmurs. Will smacks him lightly on the arm.

“You have no imagination,” Will says firmly.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Tessa says; Jem turns his head to meet her eyes. There is a languidness to her that he can only recall seeing once, before; a heated night, and silver powder toppling onto the floor, tiny fragments of it rising on the air. He had not been neither bold enough nor vain enough to presume she had enjoyed it as he had; Jem does not even know if women can feel pleasure the way men can. But Tessa had seemed to enjoy his touch, seemed to swoon in Will’s arms. Will might know, if Jem can ever drum up the courage to ask him.

“Well, then,” Will is saying, and he and Tessa seem to be communicating with one another with nothing more than their eyes. Jem tries to read them, but Will is already turning away to stand by one of the windows, staring up at the sky as if trying to divine the secrets of the universe.

“What is it?” Jem asks, but he gets no further. Tessa is close, suddenly, far too close, and his hands go to her shoulders to steady her automatically even as her eyes flutter shut. And oh God, all the saints and angels because _she_ is kissing _him_ , here, with Will only a few feet away and Jem might be dying right now and he’s perfectly fine with that.

He can taste something heavy and unfamiliar on Tessa’s lips, her tongue, something that has never been there before. With a jolt he realises he is tasting Will through the second-hand medium of Tessa, and the recognition of this fact shoots through him like a star, ricocheting off his nerves and ending up somewhere in the general region below his belt.

“God, Tessa,” he says, and pulls her in close to him, so tight he can feel her heart thundering against his chest, his own a rousing counterpoint. He can feel her trembling against him, and it is the work of only a moment to wrap his arms around her, holding her tight. Jem is not an overly strong individual, he knows; the natural gifts granted to him by the Angel are almost entirely subdued by the strain the yin fen places on his body. Nor is Tessa a fragile little doll of a girl to be easily manhandled. Yet in his arms she feels as delicate as a willow sapling, as right and true and correct as the _parabatai_ rune over his heart and a seraph blade in his hand.

When he pulls away to dust kisses over her cheeks and her nose and eyelashes, she shivers and murmurs, “Jem, Jem,” so sweetly he feels he might faint, from all the blood that has been diverted from his brain. His name, his _name_ , by Raziel, and Tessa so close and keening a little in the back of her throat. Mindless and completely ruled by a will not his own, Jem throws all caution to the wind, fits his hand around the gentle swell of her breast, and Tessa gasps against his mouth, so loudly in the quiet room it is enough to summon Will back from the intricacies of astronomy and for Jem to pull back, horrified at himself.

“Tessa,” he says, feeling the very lowest of worms, “forgive me, please. I – I did not mean to.” But Tessa, rather than flaying him alive with well-earned fury, is smiling.

“Did I not tell you once to take liberties with me, James Carstairs?” she asks, and Jem nods, his fingernails biting bloody crescents into his palms.

“When was that?” Will asks with something like interest. Tessa ignores him.

“It was a standing invitation, Jem,” she says, and stunned, he makes no move as she kisses him lightly on the cheek. Will gets the same delicate farewell, although he makes an attempt to go in for more, which is adroitly dodged. Tessa smooths down her hair and shuffles her dress about, and just like that she is respectable again. “Good night, Jem, Will,” Tessa says, and disappears out through the door.

Jem does not feel as if he will ever be respectable again. His shirt is rumpled, the buttons of his waistcoat undone by Tessa’s hands, and from the look of him, Will feels in much the same state.

Jem sits down on his bed, and Will throws himself into the armchair. “It is possible,” Will says after a long while. Jem turns his head a fraction and makes an inquiring noise when Will seems disinclined to finish his sentence. “It is entirely possible,” Will repeats, “that we have got ourselves into a mess we are rather ill-equipped to get ourselves out of.” Jem, in a moment of singular brilliance (as he feels it), lifts his head to reply,

“I beg to disagree. I feel we have got ourselves into a mess we are exceedingly well-equipped for,” Jem says, and when Will raises a brow, Jem nods rather sharply in a direction rather south of the Equator.

Will’s laugh is like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, and Jem can think of no sound dearer to him, except for Tessa, of course.

Of course.


	6. Tessa II

Tessa feels as though she cannot meet Jem’s gaze without feeling as though she is about to burst into flames. Nor can she accidentally brush elbows with Will in the hall without feeling as though the limb in question could at become a centre of seething sensation. She longs to take Jem in one arm and Will in the other and drag them away to a place where she can… if not expressly have them, then at least not to have to force this blandly polite mask of a dear friend and an upright and appropriate fiancée.

(“Tessa!” Jem splutters as she drags him into a lesser known cleaning closet, slams the door behind her and throws herself into his arms. Jem’s protests quickly die into moans as she presses him up against the wall, the whole length of her body against his. “We… shouldn’t be doing… this,” he manages as she unfastens the top button of his shirt and gets her mouth on that little spot beneath his ear that seems to short circuit his brain. Jem shudders helplessly in her grasp, wraps her tighter in his arms, the sound of his voice a broken medley in her ear as he closes his silver eyes and murmurs her name.)

Jem flushes scarlet when she sits beside him at dinner that night, bending her leg on a truly painful angle to trace the toe of her shoe up his leg, to his knee. Jem is clench-jawed, spitting words out to a bemused Henry and Charlotte, and his hand comes down hard on her foot when she attempts to tap gently at where his knees become his thigh. Will, seated on Jem’s other side, thinks the whole thing is hilarious. But then again, Will is as much a tease as Tessa is.

(“Come _on_ , Tessa!” Will urges as they make their way through the streets of London, his hand snug around hers. Half out of breath, half too busy laughing, they pitch up on a little-used alleyway, arms around one another, and Tessa’s blood is humming through her veins. “God, you’re beautiful,” Will says, and she is kissing him before he can get another word out, murmuring I love you in between kisses because she does, she does love him, she loves them both more than the sun and the sky and the stars.)

They arrive back at the Institute dirty, clothes torn and ripped, and Tess cannot keep the smile from bursting over her face. They are greeted in the hall by Henry, who absentmindedly wishes them happy birthday before going on his way. (It is not either of their birthdays.) At dinner that night Jem shocks them all by taking Will’s hand under the table, not quite as a lover would but neither strictly as a _parabatai_ , either. That night in Jem’s room, he plays sweet, painful music while Will sits with his head in Tessa’s lap as she reads, first silently, and then aloud when Jem is too tired to play anymore. Will moves to allow Jem to take his place with Tessa and she could cry for how simple it is, how easy.

Except that Jem is still dying, inch by inch, degree by degree, and maybe once, _once_ , Tessa and Will might have been able to make a life for themselves after Jem had gone. But not now. Now there will ever be a Jem shaped hole in their love affair, for he had slotted himself in so neatly and so unobtrusively in between them that Tessa fears she and Will would not know how to be together without him.

“What do Shadowhunters think about intimacy before marriage?” Tessa asks, breaking off mid-sentence in her book, and is rewarded by Will’s hardly indrawn breath and Jem almost going into a coughing fit. Jem sits up, his hand pressed to his mouth, and Tessa pats him on the back gingerly, only relaxing when he can draw breath once more. “Forgive me, Jem,” she says. “That was not my intent.”

“Nor was it your fault,” Jem replies, his voice scratchy. “You asked a question. You could not predict my response to it.”

“I take it, then, that Shadowhunters do not indulge in carnal activities before marriage?” Tessa asks, keeping her voice neutral. “Oddly, the Codex was mum on this particular topic of information.”

“I wonder why,” Will mutters, then raises his voice. “It’s not… forbidden, per se, but it’s not actively encouraged, either.”

“And to do so with a Downworlder?” Tessa asks. In response, Will merely shakes his head.

“Why do you ask?” Jem questions, his voice soft. Tessa looks away.

“I was merely curious,” she replies. Jem touches her shoulder.

“Tessa.” Something in his tone makes her look up at him. “If what you are asking is if we wish to be intimate with you, then the answer is of course, yes. At least, it is for me. Will would be a fool to refuse.”

“According to several reputable sources I am indeed a fool,” Will says amiably. “But not in this instance.” Tessa manages a brief smile, but it is Jem she is watching.

“You wouldn’t mind? If it happened before the wedding?” Jem smiles, but it is a sorrowful thing.

“I may not even make it to the wedding, _quin ai de_ ,” he reminds her gently, and Tessa’s eyes widen.

“Don’t say that! Of course you will,” she vows, and hugs him around the neck. Jem smiles sadly over her shoulder at Will.

“Of course you’ll make it to the wedding,” Will says, his voice a little shaky at the beginning but becoming stronger. “By the Angel, the cake’s already been booked, Jem. You can’t waste such a triumph of pastry delight.”

“I suppose not,” Jem agrees gravely.

“And the flowers, Jem! How could one possibly cancel all of those flowers for something as simple as the groom dropping dead at the altar? The cheek of him. Couldn’t be bothered paying for the wedding portrait, no doubt.”

By the end, even Tessa is giggling, but the pain stays lodged down deep in her heart, where she cannot reach to root it out with flame and scourge and needle.

It is later, and her eyes are closed. Tessa is drifting lightly on clouds of almost-sleep, when familiar voices pierce the fuzziness around her.

“About this… arrangement.”

“Yes?”

.”I have come to a conclusion.”

“As have I.”

“You have? You go first.”

“Very well. You know this by now as well as I. I love Tessa, and she loves me, and she loves you too. I cannot bring myself to deprive Tessa of someone that she loves.”

“The same is true of me.”

“You realise, what will become of us, if anyone is to ever discover it.”

“Tessa is worth the risk.”

“Then we are in agreement.” Tessa cracks an eye open, to see a pair of calloused hands clasped, one robust and tanned, the other thin and pale, but their strength, at least for once, matched in this moment. Tessa closes her eyes tighter, all the better to pretend she did not hear her boys at all, and is more grateful than she can ever tell them, that they will never ask her to choose.

“We’ll have to set out some rules, you know.”

“And where do you propose we find those? I’ve never exactly seen a book in the library that is titled ‘ _Unconventional Relationships for Shadowhunters and Friends_ ’, you know.”

“Maybe you’re just not looking hard enough.”

“Oh fine, _fine_ , if that’s the way you want to be about it..."


	7. Coda: Rules

“These are the rules,” Will says, bracing his hands on the table in his rooms. “We are, all three of us, equal in this…” He searches for the words.

“Entanglement?” Tessa offers.

“Romance?” Jem considers. Will glares at them both.

“ _Affair_ ,” he stresses. He has taken to heart being the safe guarder of this union. He has a sneaking suspicion Tessa and Jem are rather laughing at him behind his back, but not in anything that could be considered a mean-spirited fashion. “If any issues arise, we will discuss them. There will be no brooding, _Jem_.”

“That is like the pot calling the kettle sulky,” Tessa laughs. “You brood far more than poor Jem ever does.”

“Less of the poor Jem, if you please,” Jem murmurs, and Tessa casts an impish look at him.

“Forgive me, dear,” she says. “Would ‘financially insolvent’ Jem be more acceptable?” Will wants to slam his head into the table. Repeatedly.

“Is this what it’s going to be like the entire time?” he demands. “I would have expected myself to be the one cracking terrible jokes and making innuendoes.” Tessa looks up at him through her lashes.

“Since you’ve decided to be the serious one with your rules, Jem and I have to pitch in. It’s a difficult burden, but one we have chosen to bear.”

“Come along, Tessa,” Jem says, taking pity on Will. “Let him finish.”

“Thank you, Jem,” Will says, and scowls at Tessa when she giggles. Christ, but he’d rather be the clown than the responsible one. “Rule two. No spending the night in one another’s rooms. Too dangerous.”

Tessa nods, and Jem bows his head.                                             

“Rule three is related to rule two. No one here at the Institute, or in Idris, or _anywhere_ can know.”

“Agreed,” Tessa says, all trace of mirth gone. “Not even Henry or Charlotte – they wouldn’t understand.”

“And they’d be honour bound to report any violation of the law to the Clave,” Jem adds, absently touching the _parabatai_ rune over his heart.

“Which brings me to rule four,” Will says, and drops into the chair to look Tessa and Jem firmly in the eye. “Tessa, you are the glue that binds us together.” Tessa starts to protest, but Will holds up a hand. “Let me finish. You are the root of this union, you are its foundation. There can be no us without you.”

“I don’t understand,” Tessa says. Will swallows, and finds that for once, he has no words. He looks to Jem, who merely raises a silver eyebrow, and then sighs.

“What Will is very poorly getting at is that there can be no intimacy between him and me,” Jem says bluntly. Strange, Will thinks, that Jem is the one who can articulate these things, while Will is the one left squirming in his seat like a schoolboy. It is a role reversal of sorts but not, Will thinks, a particularly bad one. He rather likes this new, bolder Jem. “At least, no new intimacy. Our _parabatai_ bond may remain, but we cannot be… together. Do you understand?”

“What you’re saying…” Tessa says slowly, “is that there can be no… interaction between the pair of you. Because of the bond, because of your oath.”

“Yes,” Will says in relief that she understands. Tessa squints at them both.

“And you’re happy with that?” Will does not allow himself to speak.

“We must be,” he hears Jem say firmly. “There is no other way.” Tessa shrugs.

“I will _never_ understand Shadowhunters,” she mutters. Will beams at her, relieved now that the formalities are over, and slings an arm around her shoulders and around Jem’s.

“And if you’re very lucky, you never will,” he says.


End file.
